It’s nine o’clock on a Friday,
The regular crowd shuffles in
With their buckets and mops, cleaners and socks
the nightly cleaning begins.

Yeah. I’m not a poet, but I am at work. T’was here until 2:00am “yesterday” night, and back in the chair by 10:00am “today”. So while everyone else is busy getting drunk tonight, I’m reading papers while enjoying a sandwich. Since you asked nicely, the one that caught my attention enough to write blog about it was Kiehl (1994).

This assumes that the clouds determining the cloud forcing are the optically thick cirrostratus clouds associated with deep convective cells. The tops of these clouds are indeed thought to be defined by the strong thermal stability directly above the tropical tropopause.

The strong thermal stability directly above the tropical tropopause? Perhaps caused by [[this phenomenon]]? That Wikipedia article is sadly typical of its dedication to quality. I suppose now that I’ve seen it I have an obligation to fix it. Since it was Kiehl’s paper that made me look it up, I’ll pass the buck to him.

* Kiehl, J., 1994: On the Observed Near Cancellation between Longwave and Shortwave Cloud Forcing in Tropical Regions. J. Climate, 7, 559–565.